Home - is where I want to be / But I guess I'm already there /I come home - she lifted up her wings / Guess that this must be the place...- Talking Heads, "Naive Melody"

Sunday, February 10, 2013

It's What Month Already?

That was quick.

I thought perhaps I should post an update after my depressed and depressing year round-up. I'm happy to report that the mood has passed and I've been much more like myself. I've even got A Plan for at least the first half of the year. For most of February, this involved doing critiques I owed to other people, one of which was on a deadline. Now that I'm finished with that one, I can keep going with the others at a slower pace. In a couple of months I should be able to devote more time to research for the new book.

I've been going to the gym at least three times a week, though it's showing no results so far. I'll have to grit my teeth and cut back on bagels, boo.

In my usual stop and start fashion, I've been reading. I will finish Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell this time, dammit.

And there's the comics project, which is turning into an actual project, because I can't do anything on a casual level. Basically, since we have this unlimited subscription to Marvel Digital, I'm reading "not exactly all the comics." I've picked a handful of books/characters and started reading as far back as the archive goes. I'm curious about the way the characters and the storytelling evolved over the decades, about shared worlds, about what makes a good story or a good character. If nothing else, it's making for more dinner table conversation.

So that's my life right now. This particular weekend has been spent hunkered down due a major blizzard. We were lucky; never lost power. Still, I've been in this apartment since Thursday afternoon except for shoveling, and am feeling just a wee bit claustrophobic.

At around 500 pages it finally started to get kind of exciting. Not that it wasn't fun and interesting reading before that; the footnotes alone are to die for. It's just that I kept wondering if anything was ever going to actually *happen*.

May as well give credit to the comics as to anything else. Some of them are really bad, though. :)